At the DEA, Weiss toldUSA Today, they “count on [civil asset forfeiture] as part of the budget.”

“Basically,”the former DEA supervisor said,“you’ve got to feed the monster.”

Several law enforcement agencies, including the DEA, often use civil asset forfeitureto seize cash from Americans who aren’t guilty of committing a crime. But recently, the DEA wascaughttaking a further step to meet its forfeiture ambitions:data miningtraveler information.

The process is fairly simple. In order to spot travelers with large sums of cash in hand, agents profile“passengers on Amtrak trains and nearly every major U.S. airline, drawing on reports from a network of travel-industry informants that extends from ticket counters to back offices.”

In many cases,USA Today added, agents single “out passengers for questioning or searches for reasons as seemingly benign as traveling one-way to California or having paid for a ticket in cash.”